Some of you know the troubles with the management of this show over the years.  Some people feel that the woman that founded this festival and pretty much runs it on her own dime for the last four seasons can be difficult to work with.  I've worked with MUCH worse.  In any event, citing difficulties working with this person, a bunch of people quit between last season and this one, leaving a lot of gaps in work needed to be done.  I stepped in at the 11th hour to get the show in order.  We probably did six months of work in one-and-a-half. 

Bounding Main has lost several gigs over the last few years due to the economy and "big fish in little pond" stupidity.  I didn't want to lose another gig - particularly one in our back yard and SO fun.  So I seriously revamped the web site, did a bunch of essential marketing things, worked on entertainment and organization and brought some really great people on board to help manage the event.  Thank god for Chris Last and Kristen North managing the reenactors and volunteers, respectively. 

I sent out an broadcast email to all of the area radio stations, offering to give them tickets for two pirate cruises on Friday night aboard the tall ship The Windy.  No reply all day today, which leaves tomorrow.  Kim should not have waited until a week away from the event to try to give away tickets. 

Things will be different next year, I assure you.

Oh, Jon Baade had a personal loss this week, which put Water Street Bridge out for Saturday, maybe Sunday, too.  TJ and Amanda Hull graciously stepped up to perform maritime hornpipes as Ogham for WSB's sets.  I'm still waiting to hear from Jon about Sunday but Ogham can take the shows and I have a back up artist in the wings, too.  We'll see.

While I want this festival to be a smash hit again (year five, after all!) I want to drop the administrative cloak at the end of Friday and just have performance fun with Bounding Main for the rest of the weekend.  We're SO looking forward to hanging out with our pals in The Jolly Rogers, too.

It is going to be a great weekend, in any case.

www.portpiratefestival.com
www.deancalin.com

Tags: bounding main, jolly rogers, music, pirate, port washington
Current Location: Racine, WI
Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: Bounding Main